According to Reuters, 70% of Canadian households are run by women, and most of those women are also holding down full-time jobs. The Canadian national channel, the CBC, is using these statistics as the backbone for a forthcoming special called The Week The Women Went, based on a BBC documentary of the same name. CBC producers set up shop in the tiny (population: 760) town of Hardisty, Alberta, then took all the women and sent them on holiday, leaving the children and domestic duties solely to the men for a week. Hardisty's Kelly Weatherly predicted, "It will be a disaster, a complete disaster," but the original BBC version of The Week The Women Went showed that the stunt actually helped create a greater sense of parity between husbands and wives in the domestic sphere.

In a Daily Telegraph article about the English version of the show entitled "We Didn't Look Like Fools After All", most of the men and women involved in the filming — which took place in rural Harby, Nottinghamshire (population 300) — reported being pleased with the results. Caroline Aldridge (whose husband, Sam, was left alone with the kids for a week), was particularly impressed, telling the Telegraph, "He puts the kids to bed now. And before, if there was something on the floor, he'd just step over it. Now, he steps over it a few times and then eventually picks it up."

"Eventually picks it up"!! That's progress! Anyway, although some Canadian viewers are accusing the program of promoting misandry, how many of us can honestly say that our dads ran the household? I certainly know that my dad wasn't helping me bake cookies as a wee one.